After numerous PR requests were thwarted I was forced to cave and buy an Echo Dot - the first time ever I have had to buy technology - bar Apple products - such was the draw. After two months my verdict is in; if you haven't bought one yet, wait to buy one...this puppy is cute not toilet trained (yet). Firstly, let me say Echo is a superbly made product that is changing a lot of lives, playing a lot of music and will influence how people buy stuff. However excited I am by the potential, I am equally, if not more, saddened by how far we are still yet to go and why some functionality was omitted. Echo is, for all intents and purpose a glorified speaker and lazy audio search.

The Galaxy Note 7 was not only a big disappointment to fans, it was also an expensive learning experience for Samsung. Nevertheless, the overall success of the Note series is far greater than the fiasco the problematic handset caused the South Korea tech giant. So, just like what many tech sites are saying, Samsung is not at all done with the Galaxy Note brand and it is far from abandoning its famous phablet line. Ever since Samsung mobile unit head D.J. Koh announced last month that the company is releasing a Galaxy Note 7 successor, many fans of the Note series were pleased and have since started to keep tabs on updates regarding the next phablet. If the latest report on the upcoming handset is to be believed, Samsung may have derived the device's codename or working title from the deepest lake in the world.

Last October, 11-year-old Evan Spisak wandered down to his father's basement workshop to help out on a weekend project, a time-honored tradition in homes across the country. But Evan's father, Mike, is an IBM master inventor. And what they came up with was no birdhouse or pinewood derby car. It was Havyn, a homegrown voice assistant that taps into IBM's enormous cybersecurity infrastructure, putting Watson's AI smarts at their literal beck and call. Think of Havyn, instead, as a highly specific analog to Amazon's Alexa voice assistant.

Five minutes prior to the start of a speed-dating program called "Drawn to You" at the El Segundo Museum of Art, organizer Chelsea Hogan confides that no men have RSVP'd. It is a January evening, Friday the 13th -- a nightmare dating scenario. Eight women mill about the museum lobby, carefully dressed and nervously snacking on a cheese and veggie platter laid out beside bottles of Champagne and wine. The clock ticks 10 minutes past 6:30 p.m. as the awkward truth of the situation dawns on the women. A few men walk past the picture window on Main Street, but none turns and enters.

A Japanese insurance firm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance has introduced IBM's Watson Explorer AI to calculate pay-outs to policyholders. Alexa, from Amazon, which is currently in an Echo or Dot device, and in more than 5 million homes around the globe, is set to become our latest companion in the car too as Alexa Voice Services roll out across the UK this year. Personal assistants, such as x.ai and Microsoft's Cortana, are becoming increasingly popular and have the ability to organise and maintain information, manage emails, calendars, to do lists and some can perform concierge type tasks. Chatbots are being adopted by most industries. Even The White House, under Obama's administration, used them.

At CES 2017, tech companies introduced the world to loads of gadgets that talk back, making this a big year for intelligent assistants. If this trend continues, it might someday be common to talk to smart cars, table lamps, refrigerators, and TVs, thanks to smart technologies such as Amazon's Alexa. Demonstrating this cutting-edge technology at a trade show is one thing, but actually deploying it in a business setting is another. This begs the question: Will these assistants be truly useful anytime soon or are they gimmicks that need to work out their bugs (like causing you to accidentally order expensive stuff) before they're ready for prime time? Ideally, we want intelligent assistants like Alexa or Siri to "just work," like the computer in Star Trek.

In the 2013 movie "Her," Theodore Twombly, a lonely writer, falls in love with a digital assistant designed to meet his every need. She sorts emails, helps get a book published, provides personal advice and ultimately becomes his girlfriend. The assistant, Samantha, is A.I. software capable of learning at an astonishing pace. Samantha will remain in the realm of science fiction for at least another decade, but less-functional digital assistants, called bots, are already here. These will be the most amazing technology advances we see in our homes in 2017.

A robo-advisor is an online, automated wealth management service based on data science algorithms with no or minimal human interventions that allocate, deploy and rebalance(spreading your money in stocks, mutual funds, bonds to balance risks) your investments. The robo-advisor industry is in its infancy. Online life is migrating from persona desktop computing to laptops to tablets and finally to mobile. Big data and advanced analytics can help broaden the scope of robo-advice dramatically, incorporating financial planning into broader retirement planning, tax planning, vacation savings, higher education planning. Robo-Advisors have typically targeted millennials segment because these young investors want to save & multiple money faster and often don't have enough patience & wealth to warrant the attention and interest of a human advisor.

With the constant barrage of emails, your promises to do one thing or another can get lost in the shuffle. You may already use Windows 10's digital assistant to set reminders for yourself, but now Cortana will take a more proactive approach to preventing things from slipping from your to-do list and through the cracks. Microsoft announced on Thursday that Cortana can now scan your emails for promises you made and remind you before they're due. To make these "suggested reminders," Cortana uses machine learning to recognize promises you've made that have a date attached to them. If you want Cortana to scan your emails, the assistant will help you keep up your appointments.

People have always signified progress with their relentless endeavours to make life simpler and thanks to the co-operation of technology; the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen a number of advancements that revolutionised the functioning of our daily lives. Industries have, time and again, harnessed the advancements – the current one to lead the pack is'artificial intelligence'. Artificial intelligence is the most trending term in the business domain, with its major benefits catering to the decision-making process, according to Gartner analysts. The analysts' further predict that within the next five years, 50% of the analytical decisions will be made through AI: opting it over simple verbal interactions. Artificial intelligence is the process of transforming human predictions into a mechanical route with the help of parameters and algorithms, through performing tasks of decision-making, problem-solving and learning by encapsulating intelligent behaviour of computational process.